The Golden Avenger....

With Iron Man 2 on it's way to homes all over, thoughts on the newest series focused on the Golden Avenger spring to mind.  Writer Matt Fraction and artist Salvador LaRocca have been the driving forces behind the Invincible Iron Man title..And one of the best main stream teams out there for comics, definitely one of my favorites at the house of Marvel, just behind Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (who have been taking Marvel held B & C list heroes into cosmic scale events and crafting epic sagas around them).  There are a lot of brilliant ideas in The Invincible Iron Man, and one of my favorites is the way Fraction allows the readers into Tony Stark's head...his fears of falling back to his drinking, his fears about what happens if his Iron Man technology falls into the wrong hands... most particularly, his fear of the Iron Man tech becoming cheap and replaceable.  The hardcover collection of the first 19 books of Invincible Iron Man is particularly fine.  Beautifully illustrated and telling some of my favorite stories I've read in some time...Tony dealing with an opponent who manages terrible acts while staying practically a ghost, while being hunted by one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the Marvel Universe.  Still, my favorite story comes during the middle of the book, where Tony teams up with everyones' favorite neighborhood hero Spidey dealing with a major terrorist attack against Stark Industries, and a underground supertech pipeline.  Not the superhero bits that come through, but the way Peter Parker gets to the genuine feeling under Tony Stark while trying to comprehend the tragedy that's befallen the people who work for him and he protects.  Then there's the final story as Tony is on the run from Norman Osbourne and literally losing his mind.  It's a brilliant take on the ramifications of the Extremis storyline Warren Ellis wrote not too long ago, and it's fantastically put together.  This is a book I highly recommend to anybody who loves good story lines.  It helps to have Marvel Universe background info for details on what's going on, but it isn't particularly necessary since Fraction gives you most necessary info as the characters are presented.